A Trusted Heart
by Hazelmist
Summary: In which a frustrated and exhausted Hardy tries to sleep and Miller barges into his house anyway. Things get a bit weird. SPOILERS FOR S3. HardyxMiller


A Trusted Heart

By Hazelmist

Summary: In which a frustrated and exhausted Hardy tries to sleep and Miller barges into his house anyway. Things get… a bit weird. SPOILERS FOR SEASON 3. Hardy x Miller.

A rap on his door stirs him from his waterlogged nightmare. His head's heavy, his thoughts are sluggish, but the flash of orange outside is an unmistakable sign of trouble. He shifts and copies of phone records slide from his lap and join the others littering the floor. The fog lifts as he blinks at the literal paper trail of the latest row they've had over this fucking case. Cursing, he rubs a hand over his eyes, wishing they'd disappear and take her with them. He's too tired to be upset and too bloody exhausted to face her or what's frustrating them. Groaning, he rolls over and pretends that he doesn't know she's there.

She lets herself in anyway.

When Hardy opens his eyes again, the evidence is still there.

And Miller is kneeling in the middle of it.

Of course, she's helped herself to the tea and the biscuits, but the phone records are neatly stacked in three piles in front of her, and judging by how her attention is fixated on the highlighted script, she's found something. She bends closer to examine one of the other pages and absentmindedly pushes her hair out of her eyes. He wonders why she never wears it down. Chewing on her lip, she studies the call logs and he studies her.

Suddenly, she turns and looks at him with a softness that stirs him. It occurs to him that the afghan that's tucked in around him wasn't there earlier. Swallowing hard, he shifts the blanket and clears his throat.

"What are you doing here?"

"You left the door unlocked," she snaps, bristling and preparing herself for whatever he's going to throw at her. He can practically hear her muscles tensing and her jaw clenching. They've been on edge after the fortweek from hell they've been through - after the week of hell _he_ put her through since that second victim turned up in their office and he gave up on sleep for the both of them. He's not going to apologize, but he'll let it go.

"Did you find anything?" he asks instead, sitting up and motioning to the phone records of their victims. He knows she did, but he relishes the way her eyes light up for a moment.

An hour later, they're exploring a possible connection she discovered between their two victims and an anonymous number. He put on another spot of tea, but she used up the milk again and her burst of energy went with it.

She tucks her legs beneath her and props her elbow up on the back of the sofa behind his neck. She's leaning into him and has been a lot due to her gradually worsening eyesight. He doubts she's noticed yet, or that she'll admit that she needs reading glasses for at least another year, but he's become accustomed to their new closer proximity. He barely bats an eyelash when her chin slips from her palm, and her arm collapses beneath her.

"Miller, did you see this?" He turns, puzzled when he doesn't meet her eyes. That's because her head's dropped to his shoulder. "Millah? _Millah_!"

He's afraid to raise his voice - he doesn't want to wake Daisy - but the mumbled response he gets tells him that his DS finally knocked off for the night.

"Oh, come _on_ ," he moans. "Just when we're actually getting somewhere," he sighs and tosses his glasses onto the table beside him. An intense wave of weariness passes over him as he glances at his watch. It's almost four in the morning. Rubbing at the bridge of his nose with one hand, he tries to wade through the numbers once more. The frustration at their lack of evidence catches up with him again, but it's not enough to wake him or unmoor him from that spot on the sofa beside her.

He starts to nod off and snaps awake again to Ellie smacking him.

"Get the light," she orders, without lifting her head from where it's somehow sank to his chest. Hardy doesn't argue with her, it's not worth it. Sighing, he reaches over and switches off the closest lamp. The ambient light from the kitchen beckons and blurs, reminding him his bedroom is less than fifteen steps away.

"Shouldn't you go home?" he grunts, resting his eyes for a moment more.

Ellie snuffles and doesn't budge. He risks shifting his cramped arm out from underneath her and into a more comfortable position around her shoulders. She doesn't whack him, even when he starts fussing with the afghan she wrapped around herself, tucking it in more closely around her. His fingers catch in her hair and he marvels at how long it is now in comparison to when they first met. In many ways she's a completely different woman than the one he first saw on the beach or the one he'd dragged into Sandbrook. He breathes her in, she's changed her shampoo again to something more subtle and pleasant. But changing her hair or her shampoo are superficial things that don't change the woman she is now, and how far she's come and at what cost or how he feels about her...

"I keep dreaming of the waterfall."

Hardy's fingers still in her hair, but his heart lurches when the words sink in.

"Whenever we get a fucking case like this one, I get these stupid dreams that it's me under that waterfall."

"We got him, and we'll get this bastard too," he assures her.

"Yeah, we'll get him," she concedes, "But what about the men we can't?" She sniffs and his heart breaks.

"Millah, we're not all like that," he echoes the words he said to her when he found her crying outside of the stationhouse after Trish's rapist confessed. This case might not be in the same spectrum, but it's just as horrific to them.

"Some days I swear, I can't even look my own father in the eye. You should've heard what he said to Tom about what's considered rape. I know he didn't mean it that way, but I wanted to slap him," she confesses. Hardy's almost disappointed she didn't. "And then Tom," she sucks in a shaky breath, "I know he's just being a teenager and a little shit, but sometimes I worry he's going to be like his Dad."

"Miller, Tom's a good lad," he says firmly, rubbing her arm as if he could wipe away the doubt too. He doesn't know Tom, but he _knows_ Miller. "You're a good Mum and he'd never betray you like that." He drops his hand from her shoulder as Ellie lifts her head to look at him.

"Joe did."

"Tom's not Joe," he reminds her pointedly, brushing her hair out of her glistening eyes before she can do it herself. "He might look like him, but he's got your heart, Miller." He touches her cheek briefly, before returning his arm to the back of the sofa. His gaze remains though, locked on her.

"You know, in spite of being such a grouchy knob, there are times when I wonder if _you're_ the only man who I trust." She blinks back tears and Hardy doesn't know what to say. "And yet there are times like today when I wanted to throttle you for pushing that interrogation on that poor girl," she says, bringing up their earlier row that had left her close to tears. "I know that you _care_ and that's why you're running me and yourself ragged. I'm frustrated too, but you can't take it out on me all the time."

He opens his mouth but Ellie presses a hand to his chest.

"You've got to stop and let me work _with_ you or you're going to kill us both."

He doesn't need to tell her why he can't stop, or why he pushes himself to the limits, or why he's been taking it out on her more. She already understands and she trusts him because of it. He wonders what she'd do if he tested the type of trust she has in him. He considers carefully what she might do if he revealed what's been bothering him since long before this case.

"Thanks," he says and swallows down that same lump from earlier, when he was first struck by the sight of her upon waking. "Thanks for coming tonight and…" He tips his head toward the call logs that are back on the floor again. They don't pick them up.

"I'll try to be a more considerate boss and maybe you can knock off an hour early tomorrow," he attempts a joke. Miller snorts, but her voice is far too cheery when she teases him.

"You've got another cheeky date?"

"What?" His voice shifts up in pitch. "No. _No_. No, Miller, I'm not – I'm not dating." He spits out the word as if it's poison, inwardly shuddering at the thought of having to endure another awkward first date or stumbling through a weak half-hearted attempt at building a relationship with another stranger. Especially now that he knows there's only one woman other than his little girl that he implicitly trusts.

"Good." She yawns and drops her head to his shoulder.

"Good?" he repeats.

"It was a bit weird," she mutters, curling up next to him.

"Why was it weird?" he asks, even as he obligingly lifts his arm so that she can snuggle into his side.

"Dunno," Ellie mumbles into his shirt as he lowers his arm to wrap around her shoulders again. "Felt sort of weird. Thinking of you kissing and cuddling with someone else."

"And this isn't?" he blurts out. She broke into his house after midnight while he was sleeping and now they're – well – he's not quite sure what they're doing.

Ellie stiffens, but says nothing for several painful seconds.

"Is it?" she wonders.

He stares at the top of her head because she won't look at him. His hand lifts from her shoulder, but after a long moment of indecision, he clumsily pets her hair. Ellie relaxes and hesitantly nuzzles his palm. Hardy takes that as encouragement, and drops a light kiss to her crown. He does it again, keeping his lips pressed there for a few seconds and holding her close. She tips her head back when he releases her. Their gazes meet.

Her eyes are half-hooded and dark with fatigue not lust. But she raises a hand to his cheek, and he leans in to meet her in a kiss. It's so brief that it could easily be mistaken for a whisper.

"Too weird?" he rasps, giving her another chance to stop him.

She doesn't.

He kisses her again, parting her lips with an ease that surprises both of them. It's slow and unhurried, a tangle of loosened limbs and lazy caresses. When he breaks the kiss, he's pleasantly relaxed and surprised. All of the frustration and tension that has been simmering behind his temple, weighing on his shoulders and knotted into his muscles has been replaced with the all encompassing warmth of the woman in his arms.

Her eyelids flutter. They blink at each other like they're waking up from a dream; a good dream where there's no water but the slick shine that her tongue leaves as she wets her lower lip. Hardy's heart skips a beat, but this time he's drowning in something else.

"Weird." She smiles.

"But not… _totally_ weird."

She laughs. He feels the tug of the current - her fingers curling in the front of his shirt, her breathy laughter caught somewhere between their mouths - and he dives in willingly.

She kisses him in a way that's so new, but achingly familiar.

And the only thing that's weird is that it doesn't feel weird at all.

She lets herself out before he wakes.

But he doesn't drown in paperwork or rivers and she doesn't dream of waterfalls.

They catch the bastard but they come back to each other again and again and again.

Until eventually, the sound of the rushing waters of their nightmares fades into the familiar thrum of a trusted heartbeat beneath their ear and their soft breaths mingling in the dark.

 **A/N: I shamelessly overuse this trope but I miss these two so much. S3 and Chibnall broke my stupid heart but there were definitely some things in there worth thinking about. I also binge-read A LOT of fics, so if I inadvertently overlapped with anyone I apologize.**


End file.
